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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

"The Markel Corporation commissioned architect Haig Jamgochian, a Richmond native, to design their headquarters in 1962. The aluminum clad conical structure was inspired by a baked potato wrapped in foil served to Jamgochian while attending an American Institute of Architect's dinner. Each floor consists of a single piece of 555-foot aluminum. They are the longest unbroken pieces of aluminum ever used as siding material. Jamgochian personally sledge-hammered crinkles into the 3rd floor siding before contractors finished the job on the other two floors in 1965. The building is a unique architectural example of its era."

(uh oh, did they spell his first name wrong? every other thing i have read spells it "haigh")

Jamgochian's original plan for the site was larger; six mushroom pods under a circular frame made of masonry and glass. One of the two newspaper articles linked to below states that "the site was built over a creek, so mushrooms naturally came to mind, he said. His inspiration for the one pod office came at a dinner -- a foil-wrapped baked potato". I think that the original, larger plan came in within the budget, but they then asked what he could do for half that much; I guess they were really impressed with how much he could do within the budget?

Each floor of Jamgochian's Markel Building is wrapped in a single 555-feet piece of aluminum. 555 feet because that is the height of the Washington Monument. Jamgochian used a sledgehammer to hammer all the dents into the third floor band himself, in only four hours. The whole building is covered in metal patches and duct tape today, which makes it look even better, somehow. Click on that top photo to see it larger and you can see some of the patching.

Richmond was the headquarters of Reynolds Metals (Reynolds Wrap), so aluminum was a natural choice; the former Reynolds headquarters building, designed by Gordon Bunshaft, is now the worldwide headquarters of Philip Morris, and that building too is made almost entirely of aluminum, including the threads in the carpeting. Wow!

The Markel Building is one of the only two of his designs that were EVER built, the other was known as the Moon House. The Moon House was built for a used car salesman named Mad Man Dapper Dan. Mad Man Dapper Dan wanted a house that was out of this world. The moon house was built with bullet proof glass because of the threats on Dapper Dan's life. Mad Man Dapper Dan's real name was Howard Hughes. Sadly, the Moon House was bought by a developer and torn down a few years ago, so the Markel Building is the only Jamgochian building left now.

READ THIS ARTICLE on Haigh Jamgochian... he is so interesting. He's been a locksmith, a teacher, a plumber, and was a yoga teacher long before yoga was fashionable. Jamgochian is still alive, maybe eighty-two or so, and spends most of his time and energy re-arranging his land.... moving rocks and logs around.. making some kind of paradise garden. The first time I heard of him was on a tv news profile a few years ago, it was good, he was so exuberant. I'd like to see that again.

RELATED:Style Weekly; 4/5/2006, Richmond Times-Dispatch; 6/12/2006, some photos (but I'd like to get some better ones).Vincent Brooks, senior archivist for architectural records with the Library of Virginia, has collected all of Jamgochian's papers and models, and is planning an exhibit for next year, I think. Can we go and look at the models and things? I want to see them.

THANK YOU to Pettus LeCompte, current owner of the building, and to Mike Pittman and Joe Throckmorton, for helping me get my work up.

This is a photo of Imi Hwangbo'spiece from Ashley Kistler'sGarden, the show that recently closed at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. They have good shows... but for some reason I never get around to featuring them here... not often enough anyways.

Reed Anderson - Reed Anderson's piece from Garden... kinda liked it, but then not; I liked slowly noticing all the owls. Saw those owls in some student work recently, he inspired some kids. Nice studio shot... maybe I need to see more stuff.

Dario Robleto - One of Dario Robleto's pieces from his Weatherspoon show, a little like the Anderson; so much stuff, but something still missing for me. He'll be speaking at VCU soon.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Jonathan Franzen on Charles Schultz-"Schulz wasn't an artist because he suffered. He suffered because he was an artist. To keep choosing art over the comforts of a normal life ......is the opposite of damaged. It's the sort of choice that only a tower of strength and sanity can make."

Zombies are coming! This was kind of scary, standing here until the last second.

There was a girl zombie in an orange shirt around here who was a super good zombie, all my pictures of her are blurry or lost because when I would stand still to focus on her she would start to shuffle toward me and I had to escape before I could press "store".

Monday, October 16, 2006

Jo Baer's 1967 letter to Artforum, in defense of painting. She was pissed because there was so much anti-painting sentiment at the time; she'd been left out of some shows she felt she belonged in, she'd been in an argument with Donald Judd, and then Artforum ran two Summer 1967 articles (one by Michael Fried, the other by Robert Morris) that really set her off -

Judith Stein:Speaking of being rude....Jo Baer:It's the only way to be, if you're female. You don't get anywhere otherwise.Judith Stein:You decided to speak up, and you wrote that letter to Artforum ["Letters," Artforum, Sept. '67, pp. 5-6].

Friday, October 13, 2006

Kusama Yayoi, Self Obliteration, 1967 - So many wonderful and mysterious things happening in this video. She starts off covering a horse and herself with white paper circles, she is wearing a red gown and has long black hair... they are both covered with the white circles and she is riding slowly around. The video is old, it has an old home movie quality, but slow.. she brings the horse to a pond to drink, there are white circles floating on the water.

She walks into the reedy black pond, her white robe is spread out and floating.. she's putting the circles on the water.. then she is standing in the water, above her waist, in front of a floating canvas and painting red circles onto that. It is all very quiet.

There is much more, it's GREAT.Mary Heilmann has two pieces in the show. The Book of Night, 1970 is made of black cloth, with jaggedy holes cut in each page, through which you can see silver paint on pages below, like stars. Her other piece,Ties in My Closet, is a painting from 1972 that I liked better without knowing the title. The "ties" are all collaged fabric, but it looks like paint until you get close.

It's interesting to learn that she started painting sort of as an act of contradiction... that she didn't get along with painters, basically thought painting was dead... but chose it to have something to argue with people like Joseph Kosuth and Robert Smithson about.

Joe Overstreet, Purple Flight, 1971

Alan Shields - I've been liking the Overstreet and the big Shields the more I think about them, especially the Shields. It's a big hanging hippie diamond-grid piece of stained and colored canvas, and looping beads... coming out at an angle into the center of the room. It isn't attached to any walls, it's all suspended. He was into Buckminster Fuller's dome-style architecture and was imagining work built for future geodesic dome houses, spaces without conventional flat walls. He has another piece in the show like a little tie-died alien pyramid. I'm very into this idea right now, of not just making the painting but imagining the space or world to which that painting belongs.

Mary Heilmann, Au Go Go , The Painting - This 1997 Heilmann painting isn't in the show of course, I'm posting it because it reminds me of both Overstreet's piece and Shield's hippy colored strings. I can see the Harmony Hammond's rugs in Heilmann's new furniture work as well.Peter Young and David Diao - They have a conversation about their "checkered careers" in the catalogue which ends with David Diao saying "in any case, thirty-six years later, whatever we don't have, we do have 'a body of work' and, well, storage problems."

Thursday, October 12, 2006

We went to see Katy Siegel and David Reed'sHigh Times, Hard Timesat the Weatherspoon on Friday... it was very much worth the trip from Richmond (about three hours), but if you want to see it soon you better hurry because it closes October 15th. The show travels, so you can see it when it opens back up again in DC November 21 or in NYC opening February 17th.

The first room has Kenneth Showell'sBesped, 1967 (pictured above), Dan Christensen'sPavo, 1968, Ralph Humphrey'sUntitled, 1969, and Jane Kaufman's6 p.m., 1971. What a great mood to open the show with... you walk around the corner not knowing what to expect and get hit with all this color and vibrancy and experimentation and fun; it just feels good standing there with those paintings. Good vibes.

Taking photos was prohibited.. so we don't have many and of course the few that I got are with a camera phone and not looking that great.... if you have seen the catalogue and are liking it you will be much happier seeing them in real life, the colors in the catalogue are not very good. Jane Kaufman's 6 p.m. is orange at the center and pink along edges, something that even for real took some time for your eye to register.. in the catalogue you can't see any of that.

We all spent a while experiencing and studying each of these four paintings. The Kenneth Showell is a very big warping grid, and it was nice seeing so many of his pencil lines underneath... I thought of Michael Mewborn.

Hey! I just remembered that Michael Mewborn made those new paintings after a thirty year break from art making... that's another "long break" artist I have thought of since the Jerry Saltz lecture and his advice or whatever that if you don't work for a year, you are maybe a year better, but if you don't work for two maybe you are not an artist (that is not an EXACT quote). Agnes Martin stopped for seven years, Emily Carr stopped for fifteen years... there are many others, I'm sure. Ugh... I don't want to get into the Jerry lecture now, but I really get annoyed by advice on "how to be an artist" from people that aren't artists. Jerry lecture talk, with good comments, is HERE.

Ralph Humphrey, Untitled, 1969 - that yellow part seems stronger in the photo than I remember. this is not a favorite, i'm not into the edge.. stopping it before the edge.

Matt (looking at the piece) couldn't get off work to come see this show, but he came anyway. Bye, job! Matt and Cindy are my new unpaid interns.

some favorites -

Lee Lozano, Punch, Peek, Feel, 1967-70 - very nice piece.. there is a line of grapefruit-size holes in the canvas that run down it, you can see the stretcher bars. It feels curved but it isn't curved at all, it's a perfect rectangle. The two cuts keep it from being too perfect, thankfully.

She is so fascinating... all of her whacked text pieces, her cartoony tools and guns. Lee Lozano would probably be blogging now, a killer blog.

Jo Baer , V. Speculum, 1970 - I liked the brown and cream palette, and the painted sides angling over.. it seems futuristic, an object, a totem... a futuristic totemic object. This was painted a few years after her infamous letter to Artforum.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Make Haste Slowly - these are all from 1993 (i think). from 1989 through 1994 everything i did was on 64" wide rolls of Rives BFK hung about six feet high... in fact, i only worked on paper from 1989 until my first residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 1999.. ten years.

almost all of that work is rolled up and sitting in a storage locker in Hoosick, NY... (assuming somebody is paying that bill!).

Wasp's Nest - mostly paper collage - there used to be branches, but i painted over them (not after, at the time).

click the highlighted and italicized titles to see the pieces a bit bigger.

Beaver Lodge - this beaver has a paintbrush in his mouth. his fur is glittery. the beaver lodge is the taj mahal of beaver lodges.

i think there is a photo of me making this; i will look for it.

Ladder - i used to take home all the packing paper that came with the books sent to us at Borders, this is before they started using styrofoam peanuts or whatever. sometimes the paper was colored.. so you see that grey-blue, and all the yellows and browns. the pink paper came in with the postcards. taking colored paper home from work was cheaper than buying paint. the silver and gold apples and stars are most likely made from foil from candy bars.

all of these use that edging from computer print-outs, the dot matrix stuff, i don't know what it is called. Laurie handled all the accounts at Borders and used to pull it all off and save it for me, it would be yellow or white, sometimes pink. it is used in the wasp nest, the beaver lodge, the ladder. you can still see a lot of it used all the way up to these 2003 paintings, but it looks like maybe the last time i used that paper was in this 2004 piece, where it was thrown on in clumps.

The Sower - this is maybe the last one i made before leaving Philadelphia for Albuquerque, so it is from early 1994. his wings are made of newspaper feathers. the moon is the silver disc that came with my microwaveable pizza-for-one.

i didn't do much work for the six months before leaving philly for albuquerque, or in albuquerque, or in korea after that... so maybealmost a year and a half before i started up again in japan.